food, and not drinking water, you’re gonna have a
fucked up stomach.”
Paul Wall agrees, but adds, “A lot of sippers pop
pills too, so it’s hard to say that it’s just lean
[causing stomach problems]. People be doing a
lot of other fucked up shit on top of the lean. I’ve
never had no problems on the toilet or the bedroom. I only got fat because I was eating and not
exercising. But, you do have a lot of people walking around with what we call the ‘drank belly.’”
While there is medical information that links lean’s
ingredients to weight gain, a connection to actual
death is still a gray area. Plenty of medical reports
state that codeine overdoses can be fatal, but it’s
hard to find actual death reports outside of Screw,
Moe and Pimp C, which to many are still mysteries.
In a July 2005 interview with OZONE, Houston recording artist Z-Ro responded to questions about
Screw’s suspected codeine overdose by saying,
“Codeine is a downer… When they did the autopsy
on [DJ Screw] they found some ol’ white boy speed
type shit. That’s an upper… Somebody slipped
something in my man’s drink that made his heart
blow up from the inside.” [OZONE could not confirm this with the Harris County Coroner’s office]
“A lot of people out here know the truth, but you
might end up talking to the wrong people who
don’t know,” says Chris Ward. “Moe used to drink
[syrup] a lot but being his friend for 20 years, I
can tell you that for the last two years, he didn’t
drink. His mama had a stroke a year ago and he
himself was overweight. He had the same [obesity] problem as Big Pun.”
Big Moe suffered a heart attack in October 2007.
He fell into a coma and died one week later. “Moe
was like my brother. He used to drink too much,
but that ain’t what killed him. The hospital killed

“[Cough syrup abuse] is a big
problem in Houston because
so many crooked doctors and
clinics are popping up here,
so its tough to crack down on
it… By the time the police and
medical board get around to
wanting to bust these places,
they are up and gone.”
- Dr. Mike Leath
him,” claims Ward. “They drained 100 pounds of
liquid out of his body, nobody can shape their
body that fast. How you just gonna change your
heart rate like that? But since he was the ‘Barre
Baby’ they blamed the drank. If he was calling
himself the ‘Coke Baby’ they would have said
that’s what killed him.”
Nearly two months after Moe’s death, Pimp C was
found dead in a Hollywood, CA hotel room. Media
outlets originally reported he died from natural
causes. But in February 2008 reports surfaced that
he his death was accidental, caused by a combination of sleep apnea and an overdose of prescription cough syrup. The Houston Chronicle reported
that the bottle [of cough syrup] had no label.
“I wasn’t in L.A. so I don’t know exactly what happened in that room,” says Pimp’s rhyme partner
and close friend Bun B. “The reality is that nobody
knows either, so we just take the information
from the coroner and it is what it is. But we all
58 // OZONE MAG

know that syrup in Houston is an epidemic. I’m
not gonna sit here and act holier than thou about
that shit. But the reality is that there are people
who can do cocaine for the majority of their life
and die an old man, and then there are people like
[former college basketball star] Len Bias who can
do one line and die. Everybody reacts differently
to certain shit. You have to be careful with what
you are doing, prescribed or not.”
Dr. Peters offers that most syrup-related deaths
are actually attributed to drowsy drivers falling
asleep behind the wheel. When it is reported, that
info is left out and it’s simply recorded as an auto
accident, ultimately getting overlooked. “For example, bicycle accidents outnumber homicides. But
the news will report about the woman assaulted
or the guy murdered [instead of the bicycle accident],” he says. “It’s more [auto] accidents due
to codeine and promethazine than people who are
overdosing, but both are bad.”
Either way, be it from accidents, overdoses or
accidental overdoses, “lean” is becoming synonymous with “death.” Most times when rumor
spreads about a drug being potentially lethal, usage goes down either because of law enforcement
cracking down on the drug or users backing away
from it. Houston’s reaction to the supposed syruprelated deaths has been a two-sided one.
From November 2004 to July 2006, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Internal Revenue
Service Criminal Investigation (IRS/CI), and the
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) joined forces
to investigate and indict fourteen people - including 8 pharmacists and a doctor - for conspiracy to
illegally distribute prescription narcotics in Houston. The pharmacists sold prescription medicines
to people who had no medical needs for them.
Additionally, they and their staff used names from
the phone book and drew up fake addresses and
phone numbers to fill phony prescriptions. Seized
records reveled that the co-conspirators had sold
over 1.7 hydrocodone pills and roughly 2,500 gallons of codeine/promethazine.
“[Cough syrup abuse] is a big problem in Houston
because so many crooked doctors and clinics are
popping up here, so it’s tough to crack down on
it,” says Dr. Mike Leath of Houston’s Memorial
Hermann – Prevention and Recovery. “They literally spring up overnight, since they aren’t doing
surgery or doing normal doctor stuff. By the time
the police and medical board [are ready] to bust
these places, they are up and gone.”
Law enforcement crackdowns have been somewhat effective, though. “It’s hard to get [codeine]
now. Even if you’ve got a cold you can’t get it,”
says Paul Wall. “It started getting harder to get
when the music got popular, around 2005. It got
real bad and prices got high.”
Dr. Peters adds, “Amongst people who have
money, the usage hasn’t dropped. But for kids that
don’t have money, it’s not as accessible as it one
was. It may be the wrong way to look at it, but if
we can protect our kids for the future and [prevent
them from having] access to drugs, that’s all we
can really do. If people have money and want to
get high, we can educate them and support them
with programs, but we need to make sure we
target the kids first before we as adults try to do
things for people that already know the effects
and choose to do the drugs.”
On the flip side, some are choosing to either scale

back or leave the drug alone. There won’t be any
lean references on Bun B’s new album, 2 Trill.
“That was just something out of respect,” says
Bun about his decision to omit the drug from
his lyrical content since Pimp C’s passing. “That
would have been in poor taste for me to continue
to make music along that same line. That would
be ignorant. But that’s just the way I feel about
the shit. I don’t expect anybody else or any other
rapper to change a muthafuckin’ thing on their
record based on what I do.”
Killa Kyleon is one of those people. His latest edition of his mixtape series, Purple Punch, features
him on the cover appearing to pour up.
“It’s our culture,” he says unapologetically. “We
consider our music to be the new drug game. It’s
me saying that my lyrics are the purple punch. It’s
what I want the streets to consume, and my lyrics
are the dope. It’s just like when Scarface named
his album The Fix. It wasn’t an intent to glorify
the culture but shit, it is what goes on out here.”
Surely, Houston isn’t the only major U.S. city battling a syrup epidemic. As chronicled in songs by
artists such as Beanie Sigel, Lil’ Wayne, Three Six
Mafia and their extended family, lean is widely
popular in Philadelphia, throughout Louisiana
and Memphis. Addiction has been a problem for
both Sigel and Wayne, with Weezy’s struggles (and
glorification) recently becoming the hot topic
amongst Hip Hop circles. In a recent interview
with MTV.com Wayne says about quitting, “It ain’t
that easy. Shit feels like death in your stomach
when you stop doing that shit, homey. You gotta
learn how to stop. You gotta go through detox.”
“When you abruptly stop the drugs, you have
these feelings of intense muscle pain, deep bone
pain, severe diarrhea, watery eyes and runny
nose,” supports Dr. Leath. “Opiate withdrawal can
be severe. [These] drugs are in the same family
as heroin. They might not be injecting it, but they
are getting the same withdrawal [symptoms] as a
heroin addict when they run out of their fix.”
It’s hard to look at Houston Hip Hop and not think
of lean. To try and separate the two could almost
be deemed as disrespectful because of the part
the drug and its effects have played in the music’s
history and popularity. Perhaps the same reason
why Wayne can’t just quit cold turkey, is the same
reason why lean will probably never disappear
from Houston’s Hip Hop scene.
“In a way, it gives us an identity,” says Paul Wall.
“Some Texans have oil and horse ranches, we
have drank. It’s just a part of Texas culture.” He
pauses with a hint of seriousness now in his voice.
“Sometimes, being a rapper, I feel like I’m promoting it. When I rap, I talk about my life, so it’s
hard not to talk about [lean]. I don’t want to tell
the next person that it’s cool to do [it]. I tell kids
not to be like me, but to be better than me.”
Others offer more straight-to-the-point advice. “At
the end of the day, it’s about you being healthy,
whether or not you do drugs,” says Chris Ward,
offering the fact that many syrup sippers don’t
qualify for healthcare, possibly robbing them of the
opportunity to be warned or encouraged to stop.
“That’s your responsibility as a person.”
“Too much of anything will kill you, bro’,” blasts
Killa Kyleon. “That’s pretty much the answer to
every question about the shit. Too much of anything will kill you.” //